Artistic Research In Performance Through Collaboration

This volume explores the issue of collaboration: an issue at the centre of Performance Arts Research. It is explored here through the different practices in music, dance, drama, fine art, installation art, digital media or other performance arts. Collaborative processes are seen to develop as it occurs between academic researchers in the creative arts and professional practitioners in commercial organisations in the creative arts industries (and beyond), as well as focusing attention and understanding on the tacit/implicit dimensions of working across different media.

Collaboration between artists has been practised for centuries, yet over recent decades the act of collaborating has taken different meanings. This publication examines cultural, philosophical and political issues tied to specific instances of collaborative practice in the performing arts. Leading scholars and practitioners review historical developments of collaborative practice and reveal what it means to work together in creative contexts at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Key questions addressed include how artists are developing new ways of working together in response to contemporary economic trends, the significance of collaborating across culture and what opportunities are apparent when co-working between genres and disciplines. Noyale Colin and Stefanie Sachsenmaier present these perspectives in three thematic sections which interrogate the premises of collective intentions, the working strategies of current practitioners, as well as the role of failure and compromise in collaborative modes of creative work. This volume is an invaluable resource for scholars, practitioners and those interested in contemporary artistic methods of working.

This project addresses the contexts of Practice as Research and how to undertake it. This second iteration updates thinking and practices but sustains a direct and clear approach on how to become a practitioner-researcher. New features include an extension of range “beyond” the arts and a case for intra-disciplinarity in Practice Research as an influence in the formation of the “future university”. A comparison is made between Artistic Research and Practice Research recognizing that research through practices with being-doing-knowing is central to both. Acknowledging the current crisis in legitimation, a broad view is taken of how things might be known by an onto-epistemology for the twenty-first century foregrounding the bodymind but sustaining rationality and community by way of Other/other dialogic exchange. Perspectives from around the world in Part II offset the more Eurocentric emphasis in Part I.

Since the 1970s, the landscape of higher education and research has been considerably altered by the integration of the arts within the university environment. Even though a form of research is inherent to artistic creation, the creative process is not comparable to the established procedures involved in academic research. As such, how can the imperatives of intellectual (and sometimes restrictive) rigour characteristic of scholarly endeavours be reconciled with the more explorative and intuitive approach of artistic creation? The concept of 'research-creation' allows artists and scholars to collaborate on a common project, acknowledging each participant’s expertise in the production of an artistic work that either generates theoretical reflections or has emerged from academic research. This fully revised and updated translation of Sophie Stévance and Serge Lacasse’s original French book offers an overview of the historical, political, social, cultural and academic contexts within which research-creation has emerged in Quebec and Canada, before similar (yet often divergent) conceptions appeared elsewhere in the world. Focussing primarily on the case of music, the book goes on to explore the pedagogical potential of research-creation within a university-based environment and proposes a clear and encompassing definition, as well as a theoretical model, of research-creation supported by concrete examples. By underscoring the reciprocal nature of this approach and the potential benefits of collaborative relationships, the authors’ vision of research-creation extends far beyond the field of music and art alone: rather, it has the potential to integrate all approaches and disciplines that seek to combine practice and research.

The book provides an investigation grounded in creative writing and practice-as-research methodology and explores the issues of authorship and collaborative labour in contemporary performance. This investigation is set in the context of a world more and more characterized by fragmentation, displacement and virtual communication and relationships. It addresses and playfully engages with the following questions: what is a collaborative body? Can a sole performer carry out a collaborative practice ? Can we stand in for others? What forms of “coming-together” might take place when distance remains between those who perform and those who spectate? The book contains the full-length version of the score from A Duet Without You, an original performance piece created between 2013 and 2015 by Chloé Déchery in collaboration with a range of artistic collaborators working inter- and cross-disciplinary, including Karen Christopher, Pedro Iñes, Simone Kenyon, Marty Langthorne, Tom Parkinson, Michael Pinchbeck and Deborah Pearson. Alongside the playtext, the book entails a collection of essays written by independent writers, artists and academics and dedicated to the politics of collaboration, ranging from performative responses and co-authored articles to in-depth theoretical essays. Primary readership will be those teaching, researching or studying in theatre and performance studies, visual arts, fine arts, art history, creative writing, poetry, philosophy or French literature. Will also be of interest to art school students and those with an interest in theatre.

Creating Together explores an emerging approach to research that combines arts practices and scholarship in participatory, community-based, and collaborative contexts in Canada across multiple disciplines. Looking at a variety of art forms, from photography and mural painting to performance art and poetry, the contributors explore how the process of creating together generates and disseminates collective knowledge. The artistic processes and works in an arts-based approach to scholarship make use of aesthetic, experiential, embodied, and emotional ways of knowing and creating knowledge in addition to traditional intellectual ways. The anthology also addresses the growing trend in arts-based research that takes a participatory, community-based, or collaborative focus, and encourages scholars to work together, with other professionals, and with community groups to explore questions, create knowledge, and express shared understandings. The collection highlights three forms of research: participatory arts-based research that engages participants in all stages of the inquiry and aims to produce practical knowing to benefit the community; community-based arts research that has community/public space at the heart of practice; and collaborative arts approaches involving multi-levelled, multi-layered, and interdisciplinary collaboration from diverse perspectives. To illustrate how such innovative work is being accomplished in Canada, the collection includes examples from British Columbia to Newfoundland and across disciplines, including the fine arts, education, the health sciences, and social work.

Collaboration in the arts is no longer a conscious choice to make a deliberate artistic statement, but instead a necessity of artistic survival. In today’s hybrid world of virtual mobility, collaboration decentralizes creative strategies, enabling artists to carve new territories and maintain practice-based autonomy in an increasingly commercial and saturated art world. Collaboration now transforms not only artistic practices but also the development of cultural institutions, communities and personal lifestyles. This book explores why collaboration has become so integrated into a greater understanding of creative artistic practice. It draws on an emerging generation of contributors—from the arts, art history, sociology, political science, and philosophy—to engage directly with the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of collaborative practice of the future.

This is a book about collaboration in the arts, which explores how working together seems to achieve more than the sum of the parts. It introduces ideas from economics to conceptualize notions of externalities, complementarity, and emergence, and playfully explores collaborative structures such as the swarm, the crowd, the flock, and the network. It uses up-to-date thinking about Wikinomics, Postcapitalism, and Biopolitics, underpinned by ideas from Foucault, Bourriaud, and Hardt and Negri. In a series of thought-provoking case studies, the authors consider creative practices in theatre, music and film. They explore work by artists such as Gob Squad, Eric Whitacre, Dries Verhoeven, Pete Wyer, and Tino Seghal, and encounter both live and online collaborative possibilities in fascinating discussions of Craigslist and crowdfunding at the Edinburgh Festival. What is revealed is that the introduction of Web 2.0 has enabled a new paradigm of artistic practice to emerge, in which participatory encounters, collaboration, and online dialogue become key creative drivers. Written itself as a collaborative project between Karen Savage and Dominic Symonds, this is a strikingly original take on the economics of working together.